With a budget of $2,000 and a focus on aesthetics and 1440p gaming performance, our latest PC build came together nicely.
Building a $2,000 1440p Gaming PC : Read more
Building a $2,000 1440p Gaming PC : Read more
The B450 Tomahawk max VRM's can handle a 3900x. An x570 is not mandatory. Some x570's actually have worse VRM's than that board.Choosing the B450 chipset for the Ryzen 3900 is not a smart choice either. Mandatory X570.
For a streaming rig, 32gb isn't exactly a bad idea, to give you a bit of headroom, as games start using more ram.Do you really need 32 GB of RAM? I would get 16 GB of RAM take the 70 or so dollars and get a 3 to 4 GB mechanical HardDrive to store old games.
Ryzen 7 3700X,
good x570 motherboard (for future updates CPU)
RTX 2070
2x16 GB Ram
1TB PCE 3.0 SSD / optional 2TB conventional disk
dedicated CPU cooler
good power supply
and finely cabinet aesthetics.
I was thinking the same while reading this article. What good is the pretty case if I'm getting 50 fps in a game?What a horrible way to spend $2000. Making it pretty, vs performance, is simply never a good idea. Far superior streaming, and gaming performance.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor ($418.95 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: EVGA CLC 280 113.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.89 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 660p 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX500 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card ($699.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($114.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1981.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-13 10:58 EDT-0400
I like the car analogy. My turbocharged 2L 2018 VW GTI produces 228 bhp and has 0-60 mph time of 5.7 sec. competitive with the fastest domestic production cars in 1973 of 6.3 sec for a 7.6L 1973 Corvette.This build is like buying a Ferrari at full price and then sticking a 200bhp engine in it and running cheap tyres. Might look good but performance sucks.
That's definitely a more practical and better-performing build than the one in the article, but a 3900X might be a bit overkill for most gaming-focused systems for the near-future, and a 3700X would result in virtually identical gaming performance for $130 less. You could also get away with an even less-expensive aftermarket cooler than that, or maybe even the stock Prism cooler. I also don't really see the point in getting a 2TB SATA SSD alongside a 512GB NVMe boot drive when the 2TB version of that NVMe drive costs the same as the SATA drive, and handles large transfers better than the smaller version. So, you could do without the second half-terabyte drive and still have more capacity than the build in the article. Those changes alone could save as much as $300 over your build, which would nearly be enough to move up to a 2080 Ti. Or maybe put it toward a monitor, or improve some other parts of the build instead, like a better case, X570 motherboard and perhaps some RGB RAM if we want it a bit more comparable to the build in the article.What a horrible way to spend $2000. Making it pretty, vs performance, is simply never a good idea. Far superior streaming, and gaming performance.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor ($418.95 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: EVGA CLC 280 113.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.89 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 660p 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX500 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card ($699.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($114.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1981.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-13 10:58 EDT-0400
I would rather have a brand new 2070 SUPER than a used graphics card with no returns accepted and only a year of warranty remaining for close to $500. A 2070 SUPER costs about the same, gets similar performance, and offers new features like raytracing acceleration, along with a full three years of warranty covereage on most models. With a card in this price range, I would want all the warranty I could get, unless you're fine with the idea of the card potentially failing after a year and having to buy a replacement. About the only benefit the 1080 Ti has over it is a bit more VRAM, but today's game's don't utilize that extra VRAM anyway.
Didn't Tom's Hardware just publish an article yesterday about how the 3600X is an all-around better processor than the 9600K... : PA run of mill 9600K overclocks to 5ghz all core and blows the PBO overclocked 3800x away by 6% and the 3600x by 9% in gaming geomean of 99th percentile FPS in TH reviews.
I was going to say something similar but I agree 100%. Buying used is never a good idea on items like GPUs because you can't return them. And the tech is newer, also.I would rather have a brand new 2070 SUPER than a used graphics card with no returns accepted and only a year of warranty remaining for close to $500. A 2070 SUPER costs about the same, gets similar performance, and offers new features like raytracing acceleration, along with a full three years of warranty covereage on most models. With a card in this price range, I would want all the warranty I could get, unless you're fine with the idea of the card potentially failing after a year and having to buy a replacement. About the only benefit the 1080 Ti has over it is a bit more VRAM, but today's game's don't utilize that extra VRAM anyway.
The case seems fine enough, if one wants relatively clean looks and doesn't need a lot of hard drive bays. Price-wise, there might be better value options, like NZXT's own H510 (non-Elite) in Logain's build above, but $150 is arguably not too unreasonable for a case for a $2000 build. While some may want more 3.5" bays, many systems these days are doing away with mechanical drives entirely. And external drive bays have become something of a rarity among new case designs.Although, I'm pretty biased against any desktop PC case with so little room for expansion
Why would you waste money on a 12 core CPU for a system built for gaming? If you have budget constraints, in a gaming system, the big money should always be spent on the video card.What a horrible way to spend $2000. Making it pretty, vs performance, is simply never a good idea. Far superior streaming, and gaming performance.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor ($418.95 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: EVGA CLC 280 113.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.89 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 660p 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX500 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card ($699.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($114.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1981.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-13 10:58 EDT-0400
That price is terrible...
So $150 on the case, $300 on the mainboard (PCI-e 4.0 storage that boots in the same amount of time? well done!), and $234 on an AIO to mount on top of an R5-3600 that might get an extra 25 MHz higher clocks on average? <eye-roll!>With a budget of $2,000 and a focus on aesthetics and 1440p gaming performance, our latest PC build came together nicely.
Building a $2,000 1440p Gaming PC : Read more
32GB is arguably fine for a $2000 build, particularly if you plan to keep it around for a number of years. While games might not really need more than 16GB today, that is likely to change eventually, especially if one leaves other software like web browsers open while gaming. The next-generation consoles coming later this year will have more memory than their predecessors, so it's natural to assume that RAM requirements for many PC games will rise as well over the next few years or so. And while you could always buy more RAM down the line, there's the possibility of running into compatibility issues when using RAM modules from separate kits, meaning you might need to replace the existing RAM anyway.RAM, you don't need 32gb, 16 is fine, save 110$ there.